2015 Tyler Summer Trip to Colorado Part 2 - Vail

Ok, I know what you're thinking. CanyonMan, come on, Vail? There's no way to rough it in Vail, and you're pretty right. Vail is a really fantastic place, all the amenities you'd want in a high-tone vacation spot. But CanyonMan needs to get outdoors. So, we set off to downtown Vail and Vail Village to check out the scene and hopefully find some fly shops. Sure enough, we found a couple of them. We also found a river, giving Brandon and I the itch to get in. We kept wondering what the city of Vail would think of a couple of Texans getting in the river with fly rods in downtown Vail. Linda and Lauren convinced us that it probably wasn't a really good idea. We did however find out there were a few lakes in the area that were supposed to be good fishing spots.

Brandon and I trying to figure out if we should get the fly rods out

LT enjoying some ice cream and the beautiful weather. She was our family photographer.

One of those lakes was the Black Lakes, right off I-70 at Vail Pass near Copper Mountain. It's an easily accessible lake that can be fished from pretty much anywhere around the lake. We all gave it a go and, I believe, pretty much everyone caught something. Mostly rainbows, but we also caught some really strange small fish.

The Black Lakes

Had no idea what these were, but we caught a few of them.

 The weather started off gorgeous. The sun was shining and the fish were biting. Blake, with his spin caster, false hooked the largest trout the Tyler family has ever caught. It was massive. Brandon had to hold it with two hands.

Blake's massive trout.

Shortly after this, the Colorado afternoon thunderstorms rolled in and forced an early end to our day.

The next day, we went to Copper Mountain village to walk around and see what was there. We had a great burger for lunch, and then decided to stop back by the Black Lakes again to see if we could catch some more of those monster trout.

We didn't have much luck on this day. We were only there for maybe an hour before a nasty storm blew in, dropping the temperatures to around freezing. It began to sleet and, again, we called it a day.

LT bundled up as it started sleeting

We drove down the third day to Minturn to check out the quaint little town and see if there were any other fishing spots we haven't hit yet. We couldn't find anything and the weather turned bad again, so we headed back to pack up for the next leg of our adventure, Rocky Mountain National Park. Look for that in Part 3.